


Minerva

by janedarling



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 06:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16011809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janedarling/pseuds/janedarling
Summary: For the past twelve days, she has been coming to terms with the steadily growing realization that what happened that night ten years ago was a fluke—not a sign of prodigious talent but a mere accident—hope slowly drowning in her ever-present pragmatism. After all, why should they place their faith in a boy? Tonks and Remus and Kingsley and the whole Order, really, are skilled wizards in their own right. But Albus had insisted that he was special and then cast him out of the wizarding world for a decade and honestly, what was she supposed to make of that? So against her better judgment, she has waited, and she has hoped. Since he arrived at Hogwarts she has been waiting still, and hoping less.





	Minerva

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been bumping around in my brain for months, and I finally got brave enough to write it all down. Not read or edited by anyone else, so all mistakes are my own. Concrit very welcome, if you would be so kind.

It’s not, she thinks. 

Well. 

She hadn’t precisely expected an eleven-year-old boy with no knowledge of magic to swoop in and save them all. _Again_ , she adds wryly, lining up a row of second-year scrolls on the principles of incomplete transfiguration in preparation for grading. And really—what is there, even, to be saved from at this point? 

So. It's not that she had expected Harry James Potter to waltz through the front doors of Hogwarts and astound them all with a dazzling display of raw magical power, so why, _why_ is she so achingly disappointed that he hasn’t?

Since the moment he arrived, she's been watching him carefully, her eyes lingering on him in the corridors between classes and at meals while Sybill natters on about tea leaves. After the decade he spent with those vile Dursleys she has her doubts, of course, but still—she had hoped. An unnaturally quick grasp of Charms, perhaps, or even a particular facility with Herbology. She's attempted a few casual conversations in the staffroom, gently inquiring as to Potter's progress only to find out that he's been as unremarkably ordinary in their classes as he has in hers. 

It's been almost two weeks now, and she's starting to wonder if whatever magical prowess Potter had summoned against all odds in the summer of 1981 had somehow simultaneously drained the talent from the rest of his class. Neville Longbottom, bless that sweet child, has so far failed to do anything but repeatedly lose a toad, and Merlin knows how Mandy Brocklehurst was sorted into Ravenclaw; that girl has less sense than a troll. Aside from Hermione Granger, who was surprisingly quick to produce a needle in Friday's lesson, and Michael Corner, whom Severus had grudgingly admitted might show promise in Potions, she hasn't really seen anything remarkable from the entire first year.

Perhaps, she lets herself concede privately, she had given herself too far over to the buzz of excitement that had been swirling around magical London this summer. It had been impossible to ignore that this was the year Harry Potter would be making his return to the magical world. Dedalus Diggle had already sent three owls asking if alumni could attend the Great Feast this year; Minerva had been accosted in Hogsmeade more times than she could count by people who mostly seemed to want to tell her how much they were looking forward to the "new era of modern wizardry," as if a child were going to usher an entire society into a new age by virtue of his first-year wandwork.

And yet—she can't deny that her quill had trembled a bit, addressing that first letter in June. The Dursleys' reaction had been awful but not unexpected, and when Albus had ultimately dispatched Hagrid to fetch Harry to Diagon Alley, Minerva had resolutely avoided giving in to the temptation to schedule her pre-term errands for the same day. She had just...wanted to _see_ , wanted to know what he looked like, what he had grown into since she had tamped down her worries in the aftermath of a war and said goodbye to an orphaned boy on the front stoop of 4 Privet Drive. 

For a moment she is back there, raw with horror and grief and confusion, wondering all over again how a child managed to defeat the most powerful dark wizard the world had ever seen, and what will happen if he's ever asked to do it again. She takes a deep breath and reminds herself that Voldemort is gone; that even if no one can explain it, he _was_ defeated, so what is there to to be afraid of now?

She asks herself this question, intending it to be reassuring. Though—Albus has been more squirrelly than usual lately, sneaking around to Gringotts when he thinks no one is watching, forgetting yet another pre-term staff meeting despite agreeing with her that this year the faculty really need to agree on an exam schedule before Halloween instead of waiting until December like they always do and having to argue with Binns (it's always Binns) about who gets the first slot so they can get a head start on grading. Last month she caught him after midnight on a Floo call with Flamel, of all people; it’s like he isn’t even trying to keep these secrets, and part of her deep down suspects and then knows and then immediately all at once dreads what is coming—

No. She shakes her head once and takes a sip of her tea, firmly squashing down that train of thought because she trusts Albus to tell her what to do when it is time and something needs doing. She will not give into the fear, bubbling just under the surface, that he has placed the hopes of the entire wizarding world in an eleven-year-old boy who, to date, has yet to display any sign of actual skill as opposed to brief, inexplicable, sheer luck. 

No. 

For Harry James Potter and his utter normality and the unremarkability of the entire Hogwarts Class of 1998, she will allow herself only professional disappointment, perhaps with a slight hint of grief-tinged sadness appropriate to their history, but not despair. She is, above all, a practical woman. She is also an educator with three feet times forty students' worth of parchment on the principles of incomplete transfiguration to correct— _Merlin_ , why does she always start the year off with such long assignments. 

She unrolls the first scroll, casts a quick spell to rewarm her tea, and picks up her marking quill just as the Quidditch pitch outside explodes in yells. 

She looks out the window and sees Harry, soaring fifty feet above the ground, heading straight for a tree. For a fleeting, hysterical second she can already picture the Daily Prophet headline—Boy Who Lived Dies in Rash Broom Accident—before Harry executes a perfect about-face and comes to a graceful stop mid-air.

The hope that she has been so carefully trying to quash surges into her chest all at once, breaking free of the neat little walls she has constructed of logic and practicality and battering at her throat. She watches Potter fly, spinning circles around that repugnant Malfoy boy as if flying comes more easily to him than walking, and she can barely breathe, so grateful is she to have finally found proof that he is something other than desperately, despairingly ordinary. Thank fucking _Merlin_ , she thinks, tears prickling her eyes as the relief washes over and soothes deeply buried parts of her she is only now realizing were in such deep need of soothing.

To say Harry Potter is a natural on the broom is to say Rubeus Hagrid is a tall wizard. He is beautiful. He is _astounding_. He moves like he is the direct descendant of Roderick Plumpton, and Minerva knows at that moment, deep in her bones, that he is everything Albus says he is. 

Three seconds later she is running across the pitch, not entirely sure how she made it there from her office, shouting Harry Potter's name.


End file.
